Cape decision ignores climate change

Thursday

Dec 27, 2007 at 2:15 AM

In early September, I was privileged to attend a conference at the United Nations called "Climate change — how it impacts us all." The conference was attended by more than 1,700 representatives from 66 countries and more than 490 nongovernmental organizations. The secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, in his welcoming remarks declared, "Few issues match climate change in the threat they pose to all of humanity, or the joint efforts they demand from us."

BARBARA J. HILL

In early September, I was privileged to attend a conference at the United Nations called "Climate change — how it impacts us all." The conference was attended by more than 1,700 representatives from 66 countries and more than 490 nongovernmental organizations. The secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, in his welcoming remarks declared, "Few issues match climate change in the threat they pose to all of humanity, or the joint efforts they demand from us."

I heard stories about how the actions of industrialized nations are affecting the most vulnerable citizens of the world — indigenous people fighting for their very survival. Mikhail Todishev, a representative from the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, shared heartbreaking descriptions of what is happening in an eastern Siberian village.

He spoke about the steadily declining food supply for polar bears, a result of decreasing ice territory. The consequences are alarming. The infiltration of polar bears into local villages has increased tenfold since the arctic ice on which they live and forage has begun disappearing. As a result, parents in these villages bring their children to school carrying them on their shoulders with guns in their hands for protection against the hungry animals.

Todishev's story is one example of a consequence we may not consider in our daily lives. If we build a new wing on a hospital or an additional retirement home, our energy needs change. Beyond the obvious impacts in our immediate vicinity, we need to remember there are significant impacts to people in faraway places.

When we emit pollution into the air on a massive scale, we lose the right to make decisions based solely on the impacts to our immediate environment. Our actions affect people who not only live halfway around the world, but who also do nothing to contribute to these harmful consequences.

Air pollution does not respect geographic boundaries. It does not hesitate to cross the Sagamore Bridge. Our pollution on the Cape comes from fossil-fueled power plants as far as the Midwest and as near as Sandwich contaminating our land, waterways and estuaries. Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, a major cause of global warming, circulate worldwide.

There are several organizations dedicated to preserving our natural resources and preventing some of the damage done by pollution. On the federal level there is the Environmental Protection Agency. On the state level, we have the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. Locally, organizations like the Cape Cod Commission are supposed to help fulfill this mission. Unfortunately, the Cape Cod Commission recently abrogated its responsibility to protect the Cape when it denied Cape Wind an essential transmission line, effectively blocking the project.

Regrettably, the commission claimed to need more information, despite thousands of pages of reports and years of independent study. Instead of approving Cape Wind, the Cape Cod Commission wishes to stall an important part of the solution to our energy crisis by not making a decision.

But making no decision or requesting information endlessly is, in effect, making a decision. In addition to dragging its feet, as we have seen it do time and time again, the commission has set up regulatory hurdles that are significantly higher than those standards for polluting conventional power plants. Its goal is to delay the project to death.

What makes the commission's decision to deny Cape Wind so egregious is that by holding the Cape Wind cable to a much higher standard than similar electric cables and obstructing the project, the decision ignores and lacks any global perspective or understanding.

Time is short and the impacts of our energy use must be mitigated. Dr. Jim Hansen, the well-respected NASA climatologist, predicts a mere 10 years before the damage done by global warming becomes irreversible.

People of the commonwealth know the dangers and the need for a solution. Polls show 84 percent of Massachusetts citizens and 61 percent of those residents on the Cape and Islands support the Cape Wind project, an essential part of the solution. We need to find a way to combat our growing energy crisis. As Ki-moon said, "We must ensure that we fulfill our promise of a better world for tomorrow's generations."